5 ms·

I agree that paper ballots are better, but also agree that electronic voting, when used, should be open source.

by bogwog 1y ago

lucideer 1y ago
I agree insofar as ensuring all e-voting implementation attempts are open source will enable us to more comprehensively prove that it is a fundamentally bad idea.
jonathanstrange 1y ago
I wouldn't trust any democracy that uses electronic voting. It is not possible to secure voting machines and make them democratically accountable.
- ItsHarper 1y ago
  Particularly where the machines are all of the same type or connected to the Internet. If
- ElevenLathe 1y ago
  I agree but worry about what this implies for accounting and other financial systems. If we can't trust the voting machines to tell us what the vote totals are, how can we trust the bank computers to tell us who owns what?
  - salawat 1y ago
    Now you're getting it. Trust is the overriding problem, and it is a people problem, not a tech one.
    - jonathanstrange 1y ago
      For clarification, my position is that electronic voting is not secure and cannot be made sufficiently secure to safeguard against catastrophic failure and abuse. That's orthogonal to the issue whether voters trust in the voting mechanism, which is also important.
  - jonathanstrange 1y ago
    I would be very worried about banking security if there was only one bank and it was run by the government. Obviously, that's not the case, banks are private companies and there are thousands of them constantly competing for each other. They have a strong interest in tight security to remain trustworthy. They're also heavily regulated, probably even more than the voting system, and they're subject to financial auditing. I'm not an expert but would estimate that for these reasons banking is overall more secure than electronic voting. I could be wrong, though. As far as I know, hardware companies nowadays cannot even be reasonably sure that the chips they use don't contain backdoors.
  - 1718627440 1y ago
    By having enough banks, so you can switch and having a regulatory authority inspecting banks?
tmaly 1y ago
there are even ways that paper ballots can fail. there needs to be a better process that has proper controls and checks regardless of the format used.
xorcist 1y ago
If you can independently verify the election result, then it does not matter if any of the counts were made using proprietary software. If you can not independently verify election results, what good does published source code do? Elections are a process, not a result.
- bruce511 1y ago
  20 years ago I attended an international conference on electronic voting. There were various papers on the form of elections (not on specific products.) The huge takeaway for me was not the technology (or lack thereof). Ultimately all existing (and proposed) systems have flaws. The key was public trust in the result. The first step to sidestepping democracy is to attack the legitimacy of elections. One can attack the process, software, hardware, ballot security, eligibility, and so on. It doesn't really matter what you attack - it doesn't matter if your gripe is legit or not. It only matters that you erode trust in the result. If you can make people think the elections are rigged, then you can bypass them and move straight to authoritarianism. Quibbling over open-source or not is irrelevant. We can cast doubt on the software either way. Quibbling over electronic or paper voting is equally irrelevant (there are plenty of paper-only elections worldwide that are very suspect.) Naturally the Open Source company promotes Open Source voting machines. But in truth being Open Source has no (real) benefit. Software is easy to tweak, Open or not.
  - ruszki 1y ago
    World went down on a completely different path. New wave authoritarians want to pretend that there is democracy, and they want to keep up the trust, even when elections are not free or fair at all.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - bruce511 1y ago
      I would argue the opposite. Authoritarians promote mistrust in elections (regardless of whether they win or lose.) In the US for example, distrust is very high. Promoted by accusations of mail-ballot fraud, of illegals voting, by anything at all. This continues despite winning the 2024 elections.
themafia 1y ago
Candidates drop out, die, or become ineligible in all kinds of ways. Paper is not strictly better and can create costs and complications on the day of the election itself. Electronic voting is fine. Why can't we just have a printer in the polling booth? I run my ballot, then hit print, then I can manually verify it, and then drop the printed ballot in a box. Literally the easiest thing to do.
- para_parolu 1y ago
  This is not electronic voting imo. Just optimization for someone who finds taping faster than putting X with pen
- okanat 1y ago
  If there is a most HN comment award, this comment must get it. Congrats you invented the most expensive pen / stamp!
  - themafia 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - okanat 1y ago
      You still have to securely distribute those machines. All of the things still apply. Actually you need even more security! Printing paper is cheap. Shipping it is cheap. Checking it is cheap and obvious. Reprinting is cheap. You don't even need to ship them. Most of the cities are close to industrial areas which has big printers and paper mills. Making stamps or buying pens is cheap. You validate ballots at the polling stations which is scalable and cheap. It is the members of public who validate it. You don't need to pay most of them. They are just local constituents! It is their vote! You are not aware how far away you are from the point!
      - themafia 1y ago
        [flagged]
rstuart4133 1y ago
> I agree that paper ballots are better, You didn't define how paper ballots are better. Given that many electronic systems print paper ballots, I'm not sure how they could be said to be universally better. Electronic ballots can be much better than paper in two ways. Firstly, they are faster to count. I'm not sure why that matters, but it's true and seem people seem to think knowing the outcome quickly is important. Far more importantly to me: they are easier to use. In Australia we have compulsory voting. A lot of attention is paid to how many votes are invalid. It currently runs at 5%, but ranges up to 10% in areas with lower education levels or non-English speaking. Voting machines can tell you verify if the vote is valid, help you if they aren't, provide information from the candidates if you want to know more. One the downside, a poorly designed voting machine can be far less secure than out current paper system. Sadly, I don't think I've seen proprietary voting voting machine that didn't have significant design flaws. Making the situation worse is the voting machine companies like to keep their flaws well hidden (flaws aren't good for sales). In Australia, we've had examples of the Australian Electoral Commission perusing academic researchers in the courts for revealing flaws. [0] Mandating open source mandate is a solution to that. https://www.unimelb.edu.au/newsroom/news/2019/november/flaws-exposed-in-ivote-system-used-in-nsw-election-report https://www.unimelb.edu.au/newsroom/news/2019/november/flaws...
- like_any_other 1y ago
  Pharaos had to run a footrace to prove they were still fit to rule, meanwhile we sacrifice the security of our voting system so that the most feeble and feeble-minded among us can vote. In some countries even the most disinterested and uninformed in politics are legally compelled to vote. Then we complain how foolishly the public votes, and how easily they are swayed. What a farce.
  - rstuart4133 1y ago
    > In some countries even the most disinterested and uninformed in politics are legally compelled to vote. It depends on what you are after I guess, but it's almost certain that if the USA has compulsory voting Trump would not have won the last election. The people who don't usually vote; the feeble-minded as you call them, pull the vote toward the centre. Whatever Trump may be, he doesn't represent the centre of politics. If the current USA polls are any indication, most USA voters are now wistfully thinking what might have been, had a system that forced those feeble-minded voters to get off their arses and vote been in place back in November.
EasyMark 1y ago
One of the few things I was happy with Texas legislation this year was moving all to paper ballots. They still use the "bubble counter" machinery though and not human eyeballs. But it's not like it still relies on honest people and a government that is neutral when it comes to counting votes. That's starting to look like it is less and less possible with the current regime's banana republic chaos.

I agree that paper ballots are better, but also agree that electronic voting, when used, should be open source.

by bogwog 1y ago

I agree that paper ballots are better, but also agree that electronic voting, when used, should be open source.

I agree insofar as ensuring all e-voting implementation attempts are open source will enable us to more comprehensively prove that it is a fundamentally bad idea.

jonathanstrange 1y ago

I wouldn't trust any democracy that uses electronic voting. It is not possible to secure voting machines and make them democratically accountable.

ItsHarper 1y ago
Particularly where the machines are all of the same type or connected to the Internet. If
ElevenLathe 1y ago
I agree but worry about what this implies for accounting and other financial systems. If we can't trust the voting machines to tell us what the vote totals are, how can we trust the bank computers to tell us who owns what?
- salawat 1y ago
  Now you're getting it. Trust is the overriding problem, and it is a people problem, not a tech one.
  - jonathanstrange 1y ago
    For clarification, my position is that electronic voting is not secure and cannot be made sufficiently secure to safeguard against catastrophic failure and abuse. That's orthogonal to the issue whether voters trust in the voting mechanism, which is also important.
- jonathanstrange 1y ago
  I would be very worried about banking security if there was only one bank and it was run by the government. Obviously, that's not the case, banks are private companies and there are thousands of them constantly competing for each other. They have a strong interest in tight security to remain trustworthy. They're also heavily regulated, probably even more than the voting system, and they're subject to financial auditing. I'm not an expert but would estimate that for these reasons banking is overall more secure than electronic voting. I could be wrong, though. As far as I know, hardware companies nowadays cannot even be reasonably sure that the chips they use don't contain backdoors.
- 1718627440 1y ago
  By having enough banks, so you can switch and having a regulatory authority inspecting banks?

tmaly 1y ago

there are even ways that paper ballots can fail. there needs to be a better process that has proper controls and checks regardless of the format used.

xorcist 1y ago

If you can independently verify the election result, then it does not matter if any of the counts were made using proprietary software. If you can not independently verify election results, what good does published source code do? Elections are a process, not a result.

bruce511 1y ago
20 years ago I attended an international conference on electronic voting. There were various papers on the form of elections (not on specific products.) The huge takeaway for me was not the technology (or lack thereof). Ultimately all existing (and proposed) systems have flaws. The key was public trust in the result. The first step to sidestepping democracy is to attack the legitimacy of elections. One can attack the process, software, hardware, ballot security, eligibility, and so on. It doesn't really matter what you attack - it doesn't matter if your gripe is legit or not. It only matters that you erode trust in the result. If you can make people think the elections are rigged, then you can bypass them and move straight to authoritarianism. Quibbling over open-source or not is irrelevant. We can cast doubt on the software either way. Quibbling over electronic or paper voting is equally irrelevant (there are plenty of paper-only elections worldwide that are very suspect.) Naturally the Open Source company promotes Open Source voting machines. But in truth being Open Source has no (real) benefit. Software is easy to tweak, Open or not.
- ruszki 1y ago
  World went down on a completely different path. New wave authoritarians want to pretend that there is democracy, and they want to keep up the trust, even when elections are not free or fair at all.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - bruce511 1y ago
    I would argue the opposite. Authoritarians promote mistrust in elections (regardless of whether they win or lose.) In the US for example, distrust is very high. Promoted by accusations of mail-ballot fraud, of illegals voting, by anything at all. This continues despite winning the 2024 elections.

themafia 1y ago

Candidates drop out, die, or become ineligible in all kinds of ways. Paper is not strictly better and can create costs and complications on the day of the election itself. Electronic voting is fine. Why can't we just have a printer in the polling booth? I run my ballot, then hit print, then I can manually verify it, and then drop the printed ballot in a box. Literally the easiest thing to do.

para_parolu 1y ago
This is not electronic voting imo. Just optimization for someone who finds taping faster than putting X with pen
okanat 1y ago
If there is a most HN comment award, this comment must get it. Congrats you invented the most expensive pen / stamp!
- themafia 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - okanat 1y ago
    You still have to securely distribute those machines. All of the things still apply. Actually you need even more security! Printing paper is cheap. Shipping it is cheap. Checking it is cheap and obvious. Reprinting is cheap. You don't even need to ship them. Most of the cities are close to industrial areas which has big printers and paper mills. Making stamps or buying pens is cheap. You validate ballots at the polling stations which is scalable and cheap. It is the members of public who validate it. You don't need to pay most of them. They are just local constituents! It is their vote! You are not aware how far away you are from the point!
    - themafia 1y ago
      [flagged]

rstuart4133 1y ago

> I agree that paper ballots are better, You didn't define how paper ballots are better. Given that many electronic systems print paper ballots, I'm not sure how they could be said to be universally better. Electronic ballots can be much better than paper in two ways. Firstly, they are faster to count. I'm not sure why that matters, but it's true and seem people seem to think knowing the outcome quickly is important. Far more importantly to me: they are easier to use. In Australia we have compulsory voting. A lot of attention is paid to how many votes are invalid. It currently runs at 5%, but ranges up to 10% in areas with lower education levels or non-English speaking. Voting machines can tell you verify if the vote is valid, help you if they aren't, provide information from the candidates if you want to know more. One the downside, a poorly designed voting machine can be far less secure than out current paper system. Sadly, I don't think I've seen proprietary voting voting machine that didn't have significant design flaws. Making the situation worse is the voting machine companies like to keep their flaws well hidden (flaws aren't good for sales). In Australia, we've had examples of the Australian Electoral Commission perusing academic researchers in the courts for revealing flaws. [0] Mandating open source mandate is a solution to that. https://www.unimelb.edu.au/newsroom/news/2019/november/flaws-exposed-in-ivote-system-used-in-nsw-election-report https://www.unimelb.edu.au/newsroom/news/2019/november/flaws...

like_any_other 1y ago
Pharaos had to run a footrace to prove they were still fit to rule, meanwhile we sacrifice the security of our voting system so that the most feeble and feeble-minded among us can vote. In some countries even the most disinterested and uninformed in politics are legally compelled to vote. Then we complain how foolishly the public votes, and how easily they are swayed. What a farce.
- rstuart4133 1y ago
  > In some countries even the most disinterested and uninformed in politics are legally compelled to vote. It depends on what you are after I guess, but it's almost certain that if the USA has compulsory voting Trump would not have won the last election. The people who don't usually vote; the feeble-minded as you call them, pull the vote toward the centre. Whatever Trump may be, he doesn't represent the centre of politics. If the current USA polls are any indication, most USA voters are now wistfully thinking what might have been, had a system that forced those feeble-minded voters to get off their arses and vote been in place back in November.

EasyMark 1y ago

One of the few things I was happy with Texas legislation this year was moving all to paper ballots. They still use the "bubble counter" machinery though and not human eyeballs. But it's not like it still relies on honest people and a government that is neutral when it comes to counting votes. That's starting to look like it is less and less possible with the current regime's banana republic chaos.